Hillary

I’ve been excited about Barack Obama as a candidate for the US presidency since I first saw him speak at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004, when I was volunteering for the Kerry campaign. I saw his original “Audacity of Hope” speech, and I was entranced – there was a man who could not only inspire, but had a chance to be the first black president; the son of an African man, no less.

I’ve been worried about Hillary being named the Democratic nominee in 2008 for just about as long. She is bright, capable and tenacious, and I agree with a lot of her policy stances. Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. She inherited her husbands shifty politics but not his charm, his ability to compromise or his genuine ability and longing to connect with people of all classes and nationalities. Nevermind my personal opinion that she's shown a disturbing willingness to play dirty to win-at-all-costs. Rather, let's focus on the fact that she is the most divisive politician in the US not named George Bush – so much so that she has a genuine chance to lose independent voters, even as George Bush’s approval ratings dropped to the lowest levels of any US president ever (an impressive accomplishment – he is now slightly more unpopular than Nixon after Watergate). The Republicans, meanwhile, got smart and voted for McCain, who is as centrist as Republicans can be - and the independents love him.

If Hillary were the nominee, she would lose – and she would not only set Democrats back eight years, but also set women back 20 years.

Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that. We haven’t had to worry about that for two months – which is how long the Democratic race has been over. For two months, Hillary’s only chance of getting the nomination has been that the superdelegates, that is, the party’s top 300 officials, decide that it’s a good idea to go against the will off hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly minorities and young voters, and stop the first black man ever from becoming the presidential nominee of a major US political party. In other words:

“We, the white middle-aged political elite of the US political party that stands for more equality, have decide that the voters made the wrong choice of presidential nominee, mostly because there were too many black people and young people voting. Clearly these groups don’t have the necessary wisdom to elect a presidential nominee. We are therefore going to overrule whatever the results of the vote may have been, and pick one of our own instead.”

This would amount to mass political suicide. It’s like declaring civil war on voters. It is not going to happen. Zimbabwe, maybe. I’d put my (admittedly limited) life savings on it in a heartbeat. Any takers?

So here’s my question: if the world media is absolutely up in arms about the possibility of an election being stolen in Zimbabwe, why has it been floating the above as a genuine and legitimate possibility?

Why have they been acting as if this race is still going on for the past two months?

Perhaps more seriously: why is Hillary still fighting the election she’s known is over for the past two months? Why did she pour six million dollars of her own money into the campaign in the past few weeks (after the donors realized it's over and stopped giving)? Is she genuinely interested in dividing the democrats to the point where she’ll seriously weaken Obama in the general election?

Does she want him to lose, so that she can take on McCain in 2012?